Ocean Watch

Writer enjoys getting e-mail

on Tern Island

Two months ago, I left to work on Tern Island, a field station in the Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge. Since then, readers have been e-mailing me questions and comments about the place. The downloads are slow, and sometimes the expensive satellite phone ($2.15 per minute) hangs up on me, but the letters are worth it.

Reading nice comments about the columns I send home makes my adventure here complete. Some of my finest moments are early mornings when I sit at my laptop sharing Tern Island stories while fairy terns mate, seals snort and turtles hatch outside the window. For a writing biologist, life doesn't get better than that. I'm glad others like it, too.

E-mail on Tern also keeps me in touch with the real world. This remote island living could turn any writer into a total recluse. I only thought I needed to get out more on Oahu.

Anyway, the most common subject people write me about is safety. Since our little island is only 6 feet above sea level and 550 miles from Honolulu, readers wonder about hurricanes, tsunamis and pirates. One couple from Texas summed it up with the question, "Do you feel safe or like a tiny dot in the mighty ocean?"

I polled my barracks-mates and we all agreed: We feel safe.

One reason for this is that our island is no little sand spit. Tern is a former military base and, therefore, robust. The buildings are low concrete structures that may have seen better days, but they're sturdier than most houses on Oahu. If a hurricane passed over us, we'd do the same as everyone in Hawaii: hunker down in a windowless room and wait it out.

We don't worry about waves, either. Since we are inside a barrier reef, big waves break out there first. We get the leftovers, which can be impressive, but they almost never roll up on the island. When they do, the beaches and bird nests take a beating, but the buildings do just fine.

A tsunami warning came to us via e-mail last month, but it was canceled in the same download. Had it been real, we would have taken the Boston Whaler outside the reef and waited for it to pass.

The deep ocean doesn't feel tidal waves. Like other big waves, tsunamis do their damage in shallow water and on land. We might lose the barracks but we wouldn't lose our lives.

Pirates are a different story. It's possible that some bad guys would stop here in a boat, but what do we have that they would want? Our biggest treasure here is a bucket of Oreos.

We'd fight for those. The pirates can have the granola bars.

We aren't totally oblivious about our vulnerability out here. One day while doing an animal census on the atoll's outer islands, refuge manager Jennifer Tietjen and I sped along in one of the island's 17-foot Whalers. We looked for Tern Island, but it was out of sight as were all the other low, sand islands.

We were tired, hungry and soaking wet as the boat bounced and banged along on that windy day. "At times like this," Jennifer said, "I do feel like we're tiny specks in an enormous ocean." This speck agreed.

I have a month left here on Tern Island, and I sincerely thank everyone for writing. Your e-mails make my day -- and my days are pretty darn good.

Thanks for worrying about me, too.